The dispensing of medication, especially in hospitals, nursing homes and the like, presently involves archaic, labor intensive, error prone procedures.
The traditional method of dispensing medication on hospital floors requires the nurses on each shift to deposit the prescribed amount of medication for a particular patient into a cup. At the appropriate time, the nurse takes the medication filled cup to the designated patient and records on a chart the amount and kind of medication given to the patient, the time when the medication is given, and the identity of the patient to whom the medication is given. In many hospitals and nursing homes over thirty percent of nursing time is spent dispensing and recording the dispensing of medication, thereby contributing to the ever increasing cost of medical care and diverting nursing skills from more important functions and duties. Moreover, such traditional method of dispensing medication permits human error in any one of several steps of the method such as selecting the proper medication from several available medications, calculating the proper amount of medication, delivering the medication to the proper person, delivering the medication at the proper time, accurately and completely recording or charting the data concerning the dispensing of the medication, maintaining the physical copy of the record in the patient's chart or in a file, etc.
Sometimes medication is left at the bedside of hospital patients who are not critically ill and who are considered to be of sound mind and reliable for self administration of the medicine. However, these patients often will not take the medication as directed, and thus, no accurate record of medication actually ingested can be made.
Patients living at home are usually left with the responsibility of following directions to take medication. In addition to those circumstances where such patients intentionally fail to follow the instructions, such patients, especially feeble minded or elderly patients, often forget to take the medication, take the wrong amount of medication, take the medication at the wrong time, take one medication according to the instruction for another medication, etc. Many patients are forced into nursing homes and sometimes into hospitals solely to insure that they take medication according to prescribed instructions. Such a forced residence can be cruel to a patient who wants to stay home and is oppressively expensive for those persons or entities who pay for the hospital or nursing home stay.
It is thus apparent that there is a need in the art for an improved method or apparatus which can dispense the proper amount of medication at the proper time. Another need in the art is for such a dispenser that can keep a record of the amount of medication dispensed to a patient, and adjust the amount of medication higher or lower, depending upon the past amount of the medication dispensed and the changing medical needs of the patient.